Page 64 of When Wildflowers Bloom

“How’s your drink?” Libby calls from over my shoulder.

I turn toward her, smiling. “Surprisingly better than the one I had last time I was here.”

She laughs.

“You set the bar low with that one.”

“I’m sorry I lied. I’m…complicated,” I say, facing her across the bar.

She nods, her smile turning from playful to understanding. “Aren’t we all?” She shrugs. “And Bo explained. I get it.”

“You two are close. It’s nice. How’d you meet?” I ask, taking another sip of my drink.

Her smile falters as her eyes flick to where Bo’s talking with his friends. “He married my sister.”

I choke on my drink in a way that turns into a hacking cough.

She winces. “Sorry. Figured the only way to do it was to rip the Band-Aid off. She’s a hot mess and doesn’t deserve him, so this”—she wiggles a finger between us—“doesn’t have to be weird.”

I just nod, because—what the hell? His invisible wife is wrapped around everything like an invasive vine.

Bo walks up next to me, draping an arm around my shoulder. “What’d I miss?” he asks casually.

Before either one of us can answer, the DJ’s theatrical voice cuts the moment with, “Next up, we have Birdie Hawkins. Birdie, come on down.”

My stomach drops to the floor along with my jaw. Bo leans down, beard scraping across my cheek, and whispers a rusty, “Told ya,” into my ear.

When I glare at him, he waves a sticky note in front of my face that says,Surprise yourself.

“Bo, n—”

“She’s right here!” he shouts. Then it’s a kiss on the cheek and pat on my ass before he nudges me toward the stage.

Twenty-four

Microphone in hand andcomputer screen with music notes taunting me, I now know I hate Bo.

He and Libby are side by side at the edge of the crowd, smiling like this is some kind of twisted dream come true. Everyone else in the bar is staring at me in my not-really-even-a-shirt shirt.

I look like a prostitute, and I can’t do this.

“Now the song is a surprise to everyone, even little Birdie here,” the overzealous DJ says with his slicked back hair and obnoxious sequined shirt from his table in the corner.

The music starts. A fiddle riff that anyone born in the last forty years can recognize if they listen to country music. I groan and drop my head. It’s Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel like a Woman,”and Bo is an asshole.

When my eyes meet his, he winks.Winks!

The electric guitar starts to play, and the beat of my heart matches its sporadic rhythm. When the first words flash on the screen,my cracked voice only gets half of them out. I wince. Then a break, more lyrics. I sing-say more of them. The ball bouncing over the lyrics on the screen is moving fast—too fast.

I stumble through verse after verse, until the chorus, which of course I know, because I know country music. Someone cheers for me. Then I sing every word—horribly of course—but I’m smiling.

There’s a shimmy I somehow make which causes a group of girls to scream—a bachelorette party, as indicated by a sash that saysBride to Be!

The bachelorette and all her friends storm the small stage to stand next to me—we’re arm in arm singing horribly into one microphone. Their faces mirror mine—we’re smiling. Laughing at how bad we are. This is an alternate universe because we’re—I’m—singing and smiling in front of a room full of people.

By the final, “Man! I Feel like a Woman” we belt out, we all do a thing with our hips where we bump into each other, and we laugh.

Laugh!

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